♪ tonight's last word from this special place. chris hayes is up next. ♪ >> good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. thank you for joining us tonight. tonight three days after the boston marathon was bombed, we have photos, pictures of two men the fbi suspects in monday's attack. the fbi released these photos hours ago, asking for the public's help in finding or identifying them. the authorities are identifying suspect number one seen here in a dark hat and here's suspect

number two in a white hat. according to the fbi, this suspect, number two in the white hat is the only one authorities believe they have seen on tape planting an explosive device. they believe the two men were associated. anyone who knows anything about either of the men is asked to call 800-call-fbi or leave information at bostonmarathontips.fbi d.gs ov. the fbi emphasized they consider them a armed and dangerous and urged the public not to take action on their own, which seems like wise advice. joining me is pete williams. this is a big development. what's the latest? >> reporter: it is a big development. the pictures don't show crystal clear view of the faces, of course. there's pictures that the fbi has not released. as you noted, they do believe they have images showing the man in the white hat, planting the second bomb, in the one in front of the restaurant. by the way, we have seen that picture from our affiliate whdh

in boston that shows the garbage bag next to the mailbox. they say that this is now that that is not the bomb. that the bomb was planted on the other side of that barrier. it's right near there, but just on the other side. in the release of these pictures, then, they have chosen which they think will be most helpful to people in being able to recognize themment granted, the faces are never crystal clear but they hope the totality of the clothes and what they were doing and where they were will cause people to call in. they are getting the response they asked for or getting a response, any way. a lot of names. but having names and knowing the right names will take sometime. it is way too soon to know if it will be productive but they have high hopes. >> what was the decision to whether or not to release the photos what does it say about

the status of the investigation? >> it says the status at the moment is optimistic. what it says is they could not, by themselves, looking at these pictures and using the other methods they have, for example trying to cross tabulate with cell phone calls. you will see in the upper right of the screen, the man with the white hat is talking on a cell phone. they have been looking at cell phone records. that's only gotten them so far. they have concluded that they are not able to get over the finish line without public help here. they are hoping people will recognize them or have some -- and the other thing i should say, chris, they are hoping now that they have shown the public what it is they are looking for that they will now get more pictures. that people who were there at the marathon, around the spots where these two bombs were planted will now go back to their cell phones and capmeras and video recorders to see if they have pictures of these two men and send them to the fbi as

well. they are not done asking for pictures. they say if they get clearer images of them they will release those, too if they haven't figured out who they are. >> one image on the internet appears to depict the man in the white hat making a a right on the street. that is already surfacing in the people combing through. in talking to folks around the investigation, have they expressed frustration or misgivings about the fact that so many pictures of so many other people were floating around both the internet and today in certain media outlets? >> well, i think they are sort of disappointed it's out there. because it doesn't help them any and it's frustrating in the sense they don't want to see innocent people have their pictures up there. there's been a lot of that stuff. i don't know that is interfered with their investigation that much. it probably generates some tips to wade through but they have been focused on their own pictures and have known all

along what they are looking for. as you note, it's one thing leading to another thing. getting pictures, showing the man in the white hat planting the bomb and finding the two together. >> nbc's pete williams, thank you. >> you bet. >> the pictures released by the fbi are the only photos that exist right now of anyone suspected, suspected of involvement in monday's bombing of the boston marathon. but as i just mentioned, they were not the only pictures floating around today tied to the bomg investigation. "the new york post" for one, unable to wait until this evening for actual photos of the real suspects went with this one of two young men seen among the crowd on monday, ominously carrying bags while watching the race. i should note we have blurred out their faces because as you might have noticed they are not the suspects. no matter how badly "the new york post" reck quiz it is screaming headline would like you to believe they are. the post describes the photos of the two young men they plastered across the front page of being distributed by law enforcement

officials themselves and reports that meanwhile officials have identified two potential suspects who were captured on surveillance videos taken shortly before the deadly blast. the part about officials having identified two suspects turns out to be correct but the two young men featured in the front page were not the suspects. they explained this morning how this latest it ration of journalistic mall feez sans came to be. >> i seen a couple of pictures on the internet and in the paper today. until we see picture actress the authorities should we discount the pictures floating around all over the place. >> those are not the pictures that will be released today by the authorities. here's what happens. those pictures were on the internet yesterday morning and they started to go viral on different sites and different intelligence fusion centers around the country picked them up and post them in to bulletins and say nif o any law

enforcement agencies that can name these people we will take the information and it leaks back to the newspaper. it comes out in a big circumstance sgll they start on the internet and law enforcement pass them internally and leak back to the media. the next thing you know a 17-year-old who runs track at his high school has made his way from websites like readit to a viral internet presents in to law enforcement chatter on the cover of "the new york post." to be clear, the impossibly poor judgment of the editors "the new york post" was not the only reason this kid's picture was out in the world associated with the bombing when i saw the front page this morning it was not the first time i had seen this picture. the reason is because the other night i fell down a rabbit hole at my laptop at 11:00 at night, reading readit in a page where users came together to do the vigilante work to sift through the publicly available images of the marathon. it struck me as i sat there in the middle of the night we spent three days celebrating how

awesome it is we have so many images of the event that everyone was turning over to the authorities. that it was our salvation and it provisionally was but here i was stare agent the under belly of what the circumstance looks like. the images are not just possessed by the police but the property of the public at sharing them, uploading and consuming this which is why this high school kid that wanted to watch the marathon had to make his facebook time line private and go to the authorities to clear his name as a potential bombing suspect thp week. the consequences of this internet sleuthing bad journalism feedback are not lost to the fbi as they tried to find the perpetrators. they made a point to address the issue at the news conference as soon as he released the official photos. >> for clarity, these images should be the only ones, i emphasize the only ones the public should view to assist us. other photos should not be

deemed credible and unnecessarily divert the public's attention in the wrong direction and create undue work for vital law enforcement resources. >> those photos are only photos of the men suspected of involvement in monday's bombing. what does it mean about pricey and the role of the public that scores of other people's photos have been circling around the internet and gracing the front page of "the new york post" in connection with the boston marathon bombing. joining me is the director of progress eu security consultants and susan crawford with intellectualal property program. how common is it for law enforcement to be using digital images, whether video or photo captured by surveillance, security cameras or submitted by the public? >> it has become very common over the last ten, 15 years, 20 years. i have been involved in law enforcement for 30 years plus.

i've seen it transcend. i love. i'm a huge advocate of video cameras and i'd many much rather have the pleasure of having a video camera than not having it. >> you found it incredibly important in the investigate i have work you have done to have the images that are sitting in the background as we go about everyday life. we learn ed the department store in boston or something like that. >> i'm here to tell you that video cameras deter and sometimes prevent crimes. they solve cases. this particular case, if you look at the video footage that was released today and sure you see suspect, one, suspect two but there are other things you want top see, as well. if you notice there's a young lady walking in front of the suspect with green balloons in her hands. if you remember, when the first explosion went off, those green balloons were set off in the air. smaes that's somebody you want to locate and find. other people who see other

things. >> so the usefulness of this and i understand why that is the case, certainly in this case. but there is another side of this, staring in the face the fact that every second of our lives we are recorded by something. there's a question of who gets control of that information? >> absolutely. it is very important to think of the fact that this is the credible incursion on privacy. this is a moment, even in the midst of this crisis to recognize that we have absolutely no ability to protect our own image. actually the police take the idea if you are in public, that's it. you have no control. >> why isn't that a fair idea. if you go to the boston marathon you are in a public space. there's no -- i believe the legal term is expectation of privacy. that's the key legal concept. no expectation of privacy when you are standing out in front of a half million people at the boston marathon. >> exactly. >> to step this up a notch there is an electronic vacuum cleaner that is picking up everything americans are doing, images and

communications and we seem unable to talk about this. it is important to recognize these are rights coming in to conflict with fear. >> you think there are rights in conflict in this case? >> in this case we have video captures of a disaster that allows us to identify a suspect. i'm talking about elevating this to the point where you can't have any expectation in any setting that you are not captured. i think it is worth reflecting on that as a country. >> if you were working a case, do you just go to the local grocery store and say, can i look at your surveillance camera, or is there an official means you have to extract it or just hand it over? >> you can go and request it. in some cases have it subpoenaed. number one priority should be safety and security and protection of life. put that on a scale versus a privacy issue, to me that is a no brainer. you want to save people's lives. you want to deter crime and keep people safe and out of harm's

way. >> so there's no part of you, though, that wonders -- i mean, look, in this case we are dealing with what looks like a best-case scenario. a horrific crime was committed. difficult to solve crime. looks like leads have been generated through video, right? one can imagine there are all sorts of transgressions that are captured in those same images. my question is -- do those images now live officially -- if someone is smoking a joint, right by this -- i'm serious. if someone is smoking a joint by the finish line of the boston marathon in one of these photos, does that image live somewhere as a future conviction point. >> no one is going to address the person that may be using marijuana at the finish line. it will be archived somewhere and never seen again. the purpose of video footage, cctvs is purposes and cases like this and other cases where we

have command centers and police departments across the country where these cctvs are monitored, constantly and repeatedly. there is one case where the person monitoring the cctv was able to relay to the police officer, via the radio, where the suspect was because the suspect had perched himself in a position as a sniper to shoot the police officer. it works across the board. if having cameras offends someone, sorry about that, but i'd rather have them than not. >> extremists groups understand that our core appeal to other people around the world is our reliance on individual liberties. it is in their interest for us to give them up and our interest to remain a shining city on the hill to be a place where we have a real right of privacy that doesn't exist in this country anymore. >> you say right of privacy doesn't exist. is there a right of privacy, is there a distinction between being in paub lick place and other intrusive things like if the nsa is reading your e-mail.

you send an e-mail and expect it to be private or a text message. being in a public place which is what we are talking about when we talk about this cctv, close circuit monitoring, do you think that that is an incursion on our privacy? >> there are tens of thousands of cameras in new york. it is an incursion on privacy to have no awareness of those cameras or what is going on around you. >> dwayne stanton, appreciate you coming on tonight. >> thank you very having me. >> susan crawford, stay with us. the best reporter in the world on a very important internet sub culture that first identified that kid, that poor kid that was on "the new york post." he will join us in a second. [ male announcer ] at his current pace,

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let's bring in adrian chen, from "gawker." i want to give people a sense of what readit is. it is an internet message board, right, a forum. >> yep, it's a forum. it is also a community of millions of people who call themselves readitors. and it is the dominant force in on-line culture. >> look at these statistics. this is the percentage of daily internet page views of readit. it's there.

it is .06% of every internet page view is readit. way above "the huffington post" and the "new york times." this has a larger reach. and it was a sub readit. a thread where people started to go about the business of colatinging these photos, right? >> there was a subsection of readit. anyone can create a subsection called a sub readit and it was called find the boston bombers and a few thousand people posting every lead and photo they could find and pouring over it and trying to find who did it. >> the creator of the boston on the readit, said he didn't want to condone vigilante justice. di didn't put this up. worse-case scenario is we waste

our time. of course the photos there isn't just stay there, right? >> right. journalists all over the internet read readit. as soon as this took off people were paying attention to see what they could do. readit has a reputation of being this force for good on the internechlt people like can they do it? it became this -- >> proud sourcing this. let me show the image of this 17-year-old. we have decided to blur his face. this is the 17-year-old who was first identified, i think in a readit sub thread and put on "the new york post" cover. do we have that image? we don't have that image. >> i think there's a difference between dkive work and vigilante system. the detective work was interesting and the readit community was surprised and chagrinned and polite when the real fbi photos came out.

they posted a big heading no more discussion of photos except for the fbi. >> i'm sure the 17-year -old was pretty thrilled about that. >> that's the thing. to me, as i was going through this, i was thinking when we talk about how many photos of us that are out there, when we talk about lack of privacy, the fact we are getting captured all the time, you think of it as a relationship between you and the state, you and law enforcement. that can be n this case it might be really important to solve a horrendous crime. in some cases it seems like an okurgs of privacy but i never thought of the vigilante potential that exists right now. i feel like there's a lot of vigilante justice increasingly on the internet. >> well, yeah. i think there is a misconception that distributing surveillance and the tools you need to investigate will make things fairer or, you know, more efficient when it comes to -- this case shows it is not like

that. they singled out tons of innocent people. there was a lot of racial profiling going on. every brown person in the vicinity with a backpack was circled and put on the front page. i think you have to question whether this is actually a better way. >> you seem more -- >> it is like a human flesh search engine and there could be terrible repercussions there is a lot of good that comes from looking at images and finding stars and new planets. we don't want to give up on that. you want to have norms and ways of behaving on-line. you are out of line if you are attacking someone. >> i think creating norms is a big part of it. one norm should be don't try to solve a crime on your own. >> right. >> what is fascinating to me as i have been watching the last two or three days is two investigations happening in parallel. the there's the official investigation, and part of what i am dealing with this is the mismatch of supply of

information and demand for it and there's the actual investigation going on. and then the parallel, you know, crowd sourced amateur investigation that's going on. it's tempting to want to be part of that. when i was reading that thread, looking at those photos i had the weird moment at the end of it, i am like that's totally the dude. that's the guy. of course it wasn't. but -- >> it is like this hyper gonzalez sojournalism almost. like these people are becoming part of the story. i think that, in the end it is a kind of journalism and should be judged on that. as far as finding out facts, i don't think they did a good job. >> we should judge those in the world of the traditional media who chose to put the photo on the cover of the paper. when it came to gun law we were told this time is different. it turned out to be no different. it was so predictable you could have scripted it.

we will talk to the mastermind behind the house of cards is joining me next. all stations come over to mission a for a final go.

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one day after a watered down gun check bill came in they made it clear this is not over. they promised an effort to make sure we have a different congress and ask for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them you lost my vote. her husband, astronaut mark kelly said fear of the gun lobby

is what lost them votes. >> if that vote had been a secret ballot, i bet you it would have passed with 80 votes. we would meet with a u.s. senator that says they agree with the policy. they know it will save lives. i can't vote for it. couldn't really give us a reason why they couldn't. and that is unacceptable. >> today we woke up to this darkly comic "new york times" analysis headline proclaiming gun control effort had no real chance despite pleas. we are presented with gloating in the form of mitch mcconnell's facebook page that which posts a memes mocking the bill. he is pictured there with a sad face. that was not the precise center of the sadness, was it. ryan grim tweeted sandy hook parents were in hoping it would make it. the day felt bigger than that

because it was an object lesson in what doesn't work about washington. who wins and who lose. we thought who do we want to talk to about what we saw? maybe the guy who wrote this. >> we need to close the shipyard in your district. the brac hearing is tomorrow you won't put up your usual fight. you have zero testimony to add. >> you can't do that. >> yes, you can, peter. >> i spent months on that testimony. i lobbied the commission. my entire office. >> i'm sure you have done splendid work. unfortunately it can't come to fruition. >> politics, there are forces bigger than either of us here. >> 12,000 jobs. >> i know. it's a shame. >> joining me tonight is beau willimon. it is great to have you here. >> thank you for having me. >> you worked in politics quite a bit and then you have been writing about politics. what did you make of the gun vote yesterday? >> i think yesterday is a perfect example of how truth can

be far more terrifying than fiction. you know, we had an opportunity yesterday to do something special and unexpected. legislation had been pushed forward in the course of four months, which is lightspeed in terms of washington. major legislation. and then you saw the nra spending millions of dollars a half million on wednesday alone that influenced a lot of the votes. you saw people voting largely on partisan terms and folks like max baucus who turned his back on his own party. >> so max baucus, what people love about house of cards, our staff is obsessed, by the way, is the minute granulation of the mechanics of power and the calculations. max baucus is making a calculation, he's up for re-election, he's in a red state. >> sure that goes in to play. but you had a lot of -- you also

had mccain, collins and toomey. and we're listening to the american public. nine out of ten people want this to happen. so they voted against -- >> you sound so idealistic now but you have written such a cynical piece of work. the point is, and from -- i've seen this in your work both in the ieds of march. it is not the way that democracy actually works on capitol hill is not some sort of simple cause and effect mechanism between the will of the people, and the things legislators do. >> absolutely not. our show takes a dark look at politics. we are showing an extreme view of how politics can work at its best and worst. underwood is not bound by ideology. in a way he's able to achieve progress because of that. >> what is interesting is that to me when i moved to washington and started to cover capitol hill is how surprising it was to me, how common that was.

right? i expected everyone to be like true believers on both sides and it wasn't the case. most of the people there were just operators. >> ideology can be quick sand. the republican party is going through rebrangding right now because the ideology that worked for two presidential races failed them in the third. john mccain's story of going from progressive failed because it was too entrenched in far right wing ideology. the survivors, the people that are able to operate and get things done tend to be able to be a little looser. >> like max baucus. >> at times. >> that's the whole point. >> max baucus is an example of how politics is personal and can be petty. the way he held up daschle's con fir mags for health and human services and the only westerner to vote against daschle in 1994 when he was running for democratic leader. that came down to petty rivalry and a grudge. there's only 100 people in the

senate. those sort of personal politics can affect 300 million people. >> that's what i thought was interesting in the manchin toomey and i think that joe manchin did an admirable thing. that's why i think politics is interesting even if heart breaking and infuriating as it was yesterday. manchin didn't do the thing umd script him out to do. >> certainly the people ta voted against the be bill were doing political calculus. what's more valuable to me what the electorate wants april of 2013 or the amount of money i can count on from the gun lobby over the next, you know however many years i'm in political office? and they -- a number of people made the determination that money was more value to them politically. >> i think it is important for people to take away this idea. we super impose such an

ideological frame on our politics. and the closer you get to politics and you see this in kevin spacey's character in "house of cards" the closer to politics the more it looks like power than ideology. >> sure. i mean we have two diver gent ideologies, one is do everything right, you succeed and have the american dream which we know is not always the case. other is deep rooted individualalism and says be your own person and don't play by the rules and be subservient to anyone. they don't mesh. >> the producer of house of cards thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> we will be right back with click three. humans. even when we cross our t's and dot our i's, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com.

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get your first prescription free and save on refills at advaircopd.com. could you anything have prevented the massive explosion at a texas fertilizer plant. hard to say considering the safety inspection of the plant was 28 years ago. more on that coming up. first the three awesomest things on the internet beginning with

improvisational genius. he plays a man who filibusters a city council vote. the actor and comedian makes his pitch for the star wars episode 7 linking the franchise with the avengers in one insane matchup. it is eight minutes of delightfully awkward, in the moment, comedic genius but the producers have been cruel enough to present on-line. here's a taste. >> after the beat, the glove gauntlet of bow bow fete grands on to the sand and the feared bounty hunter pulls himself from the maw of the sand beast. and we realize that he survived his fall during the battle at jabba's palace ship. >> as entertainment weekly put it, in nerd terms it is like a j.j. abrams sun.

>> an amazing and sobering interactive graphic from the new yorker showing income inequality in new york city by subway stops. the map uses census figures to plot the median income of residents living near each stop. median income highs are in lower manhattan and the low off the stop in my home borough, brooklyn. the a and c line offer the largest gap in income and the two train is the ultimate roller coaster reaching highs of over $200,000 in lower manhattan to a low of less than $14,000 in the bronx. shooez these maps show in clear terms the topography of inequality in the world's finance capital. the third awesomest thing comes from vicki who proclaims how cool is new zealand. they became the 13th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. some lawmakers and spectators gathered and burst in to song joining together offering a traditional love song.

even harmonizing. it gets even better. a member of parliament morris williamson aedsing the opposition in a monologue that has gone viral. >> one of the messages i had is that this bill was the cause of our drought. this bill was the cause of our drought. well, if any of you follow my twitter account, you will see this morning it was pouring this morning. we had the most enormous big, gay rainbow. >> there's the enormous gay rainbow that he was peek speaking of. well done, sir and well done, new zealand. you can find it with all in with chris.com. we'll be right back. with the spark cash card

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or eye pain, or problems passing urine. other side effects include dry mouth and constipation. nothing can reverse copd. spiriva helps me breathe better. does breathing with copd weigh you down? don't wait to ask your doctor about spiriva. are you serious? >> yeah. >> i can hear. >> that was amateur video of an entire building effectively becoming a bomb. an hour or so after we got off the air last night, the west fertilizer plant in west, texas exploded. the blast killed as many as 15 people and four volunteer firefighters believed to be

among the dead. investigator says the numbers are estimates. thundering explosion sent a mushroom-like plume of smoke in the air and just about destroyed a four to five-block radius around the fertilizer company. to give you a sense of the devastation. this apartment building is a few hundred yards away before the explosion and this is how it looked earlier today. texas officials will not talk about what caused the explosion but a spokesperson said the plant had chemicals on site. it turns out that 66 years ago and one day ago, texas experienced a similar explosion over ammonium nitrate. >> night and day for three horrible days the inferno that almost blasted a city from the map rages unchecked and uncontrollable in a little more

than a square mile, explosion and fire create a holocaust that baffles description and blocks out the sun for miles around. >> an explosion on april 17th, 1947 and texas city on the gulf coast happened as fertilizer was loaded on the ship. the chain reaction of fires killed almost 600 people. ammonium nitrate can be a powerful explosive. it is what timothy mcveigh used to blow up the alfred p. myrrh row building. there is no reason to suspect foul play in this incident. the point is that fertilizer is a dangerous substance. in 2006, according to the dallas morning news, texas regulators knew the west fertilizer company had 12,000 tanks of ammonia and a school was evacuated due to a controlled fire from the fertilizer plant. the dallas morning news is saying the plant told officials it did not praent risk of fire or explosion and worse-case

scenario would be a ten-minute release of ammonia gas that would kill or injure no one and then this. records from the federal occupational safety and health administration show the agency's last inspection of the west fertilizer plant happened in 1985. for a few violations that osha considered serious the company was fined, wait for it, $30. $30. 28 years seems like a long time between osha inspections for an inherently risky work place. according to the "new york times," while the number of inspectors has grown under the obama administration, osha has 2400 responsible for overseeing 8 million work sites. one inspector per 160,000 workers. a ratio that has not changed since '70 and the federal budget to protect workers is half of those set aside for protecting fish and wildlife. we talked about fatalities from terrorism and gun deaths. there is a category we didn't mention, work place fatalities.

in 2010, 3,000 americans died from terror attacks and 335,000 americans died at the hands of a gun during the same time and 60,000 work place deaths. you would think on the day after one work place blew up an entire town that tom perez, president obama's new nominee for labor secretary, the department that oversees osha and looks out for people in dangerous work places all over the country, the day he went before a senate committee you would think the day after an absolutely horrifying deadly work place explosion in a factory that had not been inspected in almost 30 years, that perez would be asked about it. and you would be wrong. during the entire hearing, no one saw it relevant to raise a peep about west or osha. they found time to talk about a favorite right wing bug-a-boo. occupational safety and health administration questions zero.

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let's bring in mike elk, staff writer, and celeste, former policy analyst for the department of labor's occupational safety and health administration. when you heard about this and started looking through the osha records, because i think i first saw them from your reporting. were you surprised it'd been so long since osha had inspected the plant? >> no, literally this plant has

never been inspected in my lifetime. it didn't surprise me. you know, if every osha -- there's not enough osha inspectors to inspect every workplace in the country. there's so few in the state of texas, it would take 98 years for osha to visit every workplace in the state of texas once. it didn't surprise me there wasn't an inspection. typically, there's only inspections at osha when a worker calls up and complains and that typically only happens in a union workplace. >> so it's prompted by a complaint and then someone comes out. it's not like there's people canvassing and knocking on doors of hazardous work sites? >> occasionally, but not that often. >> celeste, what is the standard for, you would think a fertilizer -- there's about 20 employees as far as we know in the west fertilizer warehouse where this happened. what is the standard for what would prompt a kind of heightened level of scrutiny from osha or from any kind of federal regulatory body looking into this? >> you're absolutely right. the materials that we believe

were on that site are extremely caustic and can cause catastrophic damage to both the plant and the community. osha does target workplaces that are particularly hazardous. but that's such a small fraction of the work that they do. and depending on how this particular plant was categorized how they described their industry, they may have even been exempt from osha inspections for many years congress has put a writer that prohibits the agencies from doing inspections at small facilities if they have less than ten employees in particular industries that are designated to be low-injury industries. but what we know from injury and illness records is that slips and trips and cuts are not predictive of what's going to happen in a facility like this where you have, you know,

releases of highly hazardous chemicals. so, i mean, really a lot of this responsibility falls on congress. one, for not adequately funding osha. but two, for putting handcuffs on the agency to really decide where it needs to target its resources. >> how does osha think about risk? how do you think -- you would think that, again, a fertilizer, i mean, we know that there are epa regulators in there, we know there were texas air quality regulators in there. last time, there was a real kind of inspection, i think 2006. now, how does osha think about risk in the workplace, you know, a mine versus a call center versus a fertilizer factory? >> celeste probably was better -- >> go ahead, celeste. >> i was just going -- what i wanted to say was when you have an agency that has such a huge mission, 9 million workplaces and so few inspectors, it's a real challenge to figure out where it's best sending those

inspectors for -- to spend their time. and so, osha does have a number of emphasis programs, particularly for those facilities that have highly hazardous chemicals. but even that, you know, they're only going to get to a few dozen of those plants. and so, chris, your question is an appropriate one, but i think it's a little difficult to think about risk when you have such limited resources. >> right, they're stretched too thin to be thinking in this comprehensive way about risk that you would want to prevent something like this. has this, mike, you've been reporting about this a lot. is this something that has gotten better or worse in the last five years? has it more or less stayed the same? >> well, you know, if you look over the long run, how difficult it is for osha to enact new safety rules. obama has not in his 4 1/2 years in office completed a rule on any matter.

the average length of time it takes for osha to identify a new problem and issue a rule subpoena seven years. the obama administration is currently issuing new rules, the reagan administration ruled at a rate four times that the obama administration of workplace safety. it's gotten progressively worse. >> if i might put that in context. we have to think about what has gone on in washington, d.c. in terms of real attacks on regulatory agencies. >> yeah. >> they're vilified, they're made to be responsible for the fall of our economy. and that's not what happens. and there's no evidence whatsoever to demonstrate that workplace safety regulations by osha make any impact on businesses' ability. and i would argue that a facility like this that blows up not only do you have the devastation of people who have been killed, you have now a lost numbers of jobs and you have a

community that's, you know, completely devastated by this disaster. >> yeah, and this is a perfect example of, i mean, i don't -- i cover public life for a living. i don't think very often about who is regulating huge warehouses of nitrates that are sitting there and could blow up. that's someone's job, right? someone's out there doing this. one place is the chemical safety board. they do post disaster investigations. they try to create recommendations. here's a statistic to give you a sense of about the squeezing there is on regulatory bodies more fully. here's those gray bars are recorded incidents, right? chemical workplace incidents, and those orange bars are investigations. and what you see is a gap opening up between the two. does that track with what you've seen, celeste? >> absolutely. when you talk about the chemical safety board, their budget is $10 million. $10 million. and they try to respond yo